Barack Obama has long been known for his socialistic convictions and messianic tendencies. That he therefore wants to rule rather than represent and to dictate rather than debate is not hard to understand. And while he may not come right out and say it, he expects us to pledge allegiance to him. He said as much when he told Republican House members just three days after his inauguration that the quicker they quit listening to voices that run counter to his, the better for us all.

Obama has been encouraged down this kingly path by some very unsavory characters. Just a month before the 2008 presidential elections were held, he drew the praise of the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who said “when Obama talks ‘the messiah is absolutely speaking.’” And more recently, on April 24, 2009, he drew praise from communist dictators from “Boliva, Cuba, Dominica, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela” who are trusting Obama to join them in their efforts to prove that “capitalism is leading humanity and the planet to extinction” by incorporating everything from health care to cell service under the guise of “human rights” — and thus under the purview of government entitlements at taxpayer expense.

The scary news is that our president is a self-aggrandizing anti-capitalist with or without the support of Farrakhan and the Latin communists, and therefore has no problem overseeing a federal government eager to take over more aspects of our everyday lives. For the more Obama co-opts, the more we have to focus on him. And please don’t fail to understand that this includes religion in the United States — especially Christianity.

Obama wants his judgments and convictions to be our guide in all spheres of life, even when his judgments run 180 degrees counter to the natural law that guided our Founders or the Bibles that guided the Puritans. Therefore, it was as easy for him to skip the National Day of Prayer on May 7, 2009, and open the door to the legalized killing of “days-old unborn children for [stem cell] research” as it was for him to tell GM what type of cars they’ll be building in the future if they want to remain extant.

Obama has long been opposed to the traditional values that undergird this nation and has been wise enough to war against those values in the name of those values, thus disorienting those whom he can’t intellectually disarm. For example, when he discusses any of his personal positions that go against the Christian faith, such as his pro-abortion stance, he always makes certain to mention that he’s a Christian in the process. The implication being that Christianity’s chief characteristic is some vague acceptance of all positions as equally valid instead of the orthodox, historical Christian insistence on truth and justice, good and evil.

Ultimately, this allows him to dismiss Christianity’s ethical claims on the life of the believer altogether. This was clear when he spoke about the tensions between his pro-abortion stance and Christianity at the Call to Renewal Conference in 2006: “Democracy demands that … religiously motivated [individuals] translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values.”

This is also how Obama sidestepped the implications of his support for abortion when giving Notre Dame’s commencement address. He made it sound like the pro-abortion and anti-abortion positions are just two viable positions that Christians can hold. While he admitted that these two positions flow from “views … [which] are complex and even contradictory … [and] irreconcilable,” he wisely avoided the use of smaller but more important words such as “right” and “wrong,” and asked that members of the “irreconcilable” factions “honor the consciences” of those with whom they disagree on the abortion issue. Never mind that this tactic allowed him to continue down the path of supporting abortion without having to explain why he supports it or to justify his use of taxpayer dollars to fund the practice.

But how dare we expect the great and powerful Obama to explain himself, as if he too were a mere serf or subject, or even a run-of-the-mill politician from days gone by?

When it comes to economics, Obama’s mode of operation is similar to that which he uses when talking to religious universities and Christian congregations. Therefore, although he’s only been in office since January 20, 2009, he’s been able to move at a speed that disorients those he can’t convert and has succeeded in the quasi-nationalization of many banks, financial institutions, and the American auto industry. He’s openly setting his sights on our health care system now, which means the Latin American communist leaders who asked Obama to join their war against capitalism should feel encouraged that things are going their way here in the United States.

Of course, Obama always says government bailouts (takeovers) are just temporary and that he only resorts to them as a last-ditch effort to save the economy. But the fact that he has that cheese-eating grin on his face every time he announces more government involvement seems dubious.

In fact, in a style which only a two-bit revolutionary could love, the always-grinning Obama acts then explains or at best acts while explaining, so that by the time his explanation comes through it’s too late to do much more than go along with him. This is the epitome of what the late Harvard Professor Crane Brinton communicated in his book The Anatomy of Revolution, when he wrote of how extremists like Vladimir Lenin and Josef Stalin (and Obama) cannot wait until people share their views before acting, but must act and trust that the people will eventually see why the action was necessary to further the revolution.

The bottom line is this: Forget the “one nation under God” stuff and understand that for the foreseeable future we are to consider ourselves “one nation under Obama.” The quicker we figure this out, the easier the adjustment is going to be for us all.Click to read the article and the comments